Link to the Synopsis Slideshow

Climate Control is a metafictional dark comedy about the climate crisis and its intersection with recent advancements in generative AI. The film centers a director who is shooting a documentary about the perils of fossil fuels but is repeatedly subverted by an AI bot that prefers the distraction of a generic love story. Climate Control juxtaposes film's dual nature as both a tool for activism and a means of escapism, mirroring the often conflicting generational responses to the climate crisis. Eco-anxiety fosters apathy and burnout. It functions akin to white fragility, monopolizing attention and diverting resources to the dominant group. The film’s cis white protagonist, desperate to communicate the statistical horrors of the coal industry, encounters her archenemy, a precocious people-pleasing AI bot with unlimited digital resources for making its sanitized girl-meets-boy tale. Using a hybrid of documentary, experimental, and narrative techniques, the film is a metafiction made in a collaboration with undergraduate film students at Cal Poly Humboldt, along with Pika Labs and ChatGPT.